Pesticides are widely regarded as an efficient way of optimizing agricultural production by reducing the pressure from pests and other organisms on the growing crops. Both the quantity and the quality of crops are increased by use of chemical compounds that reduce damage to the crop by insects, fungi or weeds.
In order to reduce the pressure of competitive vegetation on the crop, herbicides have proven effective in limiting growth of unwanted plants. The herbicidal compounds can either kill all or most vegetation that they come into contact with (total or unselective herbicides) or can selectively affect certain types of plants while barely affecting others. This is particularly helpful when a crop is unharmed by a compound whereas a broad spectrum of unwanted weeds are killed by the same compound—the compound is then said to be selective with respect to the crop and can be applied to the agricultural area even after the crop has started to grow, i.e., post-emergent. This is helpful when an herbicidal treatment is required during the growing season to control high weed pressure. Very often, weeds that spontaneously appear represent a large number of different species that react differently to herbicides. To ensure optimal control, it is common practice to apply more than one herbicidal compound in the course of a season over agricultural areas. This also reduces the probability of plants developing a resistance to any given herbicide, since different herbicides usually affect different cellular targets in the plant and so a resistant plant would need to simultaneously develop more than one mechanism or mutation (one for each herbicide applied) in order to survive and reproduce. However, this multiple application increases the cost of control for the farmer, both in costs of products, and also in labor and application times when products are applied consecutively. It has been found, and is an object of this invention, that novel ester compounds formed from acids and alcohols that present herbicidal properties present excellent herbicidal properties toward broad-leafed weed species as well as grasses. Some of these novel esters can be useful in eliminating weeds that have become tolerant of either the precursor alcohol or acid.